Christmas in the King's Bed Read online

  “Don’t you dare take that tone with me,” her father had snarled, that dangerous note in his voice. The one Calista had gone out of her way to avoid hearing for years now—and had been mostly successful. Because she’d convinced him that she was obedient. His protégé, desperate for his approval. His successor who followed his every command. As close as it was possible to get to the son he’d always wanted but had never had.

  But she knew in that moment that if she’d been within reach, he would have slapped her soundly.

  Don’t go and ruin everything now, she’d warned herself.

  “I’m sorry,” she’d said at once, the conciliatory tone bitter on her tongue. She’d tried to shift her body language where she sat, hunching her shoulders and making herself small, the way she’d used to do. Back when she’d been a girl, and her father’s rages had been a daily, inescapable trial there’d been no hope of escaping. “I just... Me as a queen? I can’t imagine it, Papa.”

  She hated that word. Papa. As if there was some affection between them. As if her father was capable of such a thing as a paternal feeling. Or feelings at all.

  But long ago, she’d learned how to soothe him, and calling him papa as if she admired and revered him was one method. Sometimes the only way to make it through life in her father’s fist was to bow and scrape a little and tell him only things he wished to hear. As she’d grown, she’d learned that what a man like her father truly wanted from her was accomplishments he could claim as his own. So she’d thrown herself headfirst into making them happen.

  She hadn’t gotten herself in a situation where she needed to be quite so conciliatory in a long while. She couldn’t say she liked the feeling.

  Calista had been relieved to discover that she still had the knack for calming him when he settled himself in the chair on the other side of her desk, looking less furious and more...avid. She’d had to fight to conceal her shudder of distaste.

  “I paid a great deal of money to secure your betrothal to Max’s royal spawn,” he’d told her, the remnants of his infamous temper still a little too obvious in his voice. “I expect you to honor that investment with a formal engagement and wedding.”

  “Of course, Papa,” she’d murmured, aiming for sweet and humble. “Have I ever let you down?”

  Calista was able to make herself say such things because she knew full well that the takeover she’d been planning for years was close. The annual board meeting was December 23. That gave her what was left of the year to make sure all her ducks were in a row. Everything she wanted was so close within her grasp she could almost reach out and touch it with her fingertips—

  But if she got ahead of herself, she’d ruin everything. Overconfidence would lead straight to a loss. She knew that. Just as she knew she needed to win.

  So despite her feelings on the subject, Calista had agreed to go ahead with this ridiculous engagement. And the wedding, she understood, theoretically would follow it. She had no other choice. Or, more accurately, her father had assumed she was fully on board because she knew better than to argue with him. It was pointless. Aristotle was obsessed with marrying her off to the brand-new king, and fighting with him about it would only get in the way of her true aims.

  But she certainly hadn’t expected it to take so long to get her first audience with King Orion. His father had died in the summer and here it was November. She’d had to spend months acting as if she was not only interested in marrying the man, but devastated that he was ignoring their betrothal. She’d had to listen to her father complain endlessly about the situation and about how it was a personal insult to him.

  Worse, she’d had to suffer her sister’s unapologetic cackling about her upcoming royal wedding.

  Still, Calista had come here today prepared to do what she needed to do. Pretend anything, act any part to hasten this along—not because she wanted to marry anyone, much less the king, but because it would give her father something to focus on while she gutted his company and made it her own. And the more her father focused on himself, the less he was likely to turn his attention to Melody.

  Calista was determined to keep him from concentrating on her younger sister, no matter what.

  But as she stared back at the new, young king, having acquitted herself marvelously—if she said so herself—with a little of those noble manners her teachers in boarding school had claimed she would never learn, she found herself revising her thinking on this whole big mess.

  Because if what her father had ranted repeatedly was true, King Orion had to marry her.

  He didn’t have a choice in the matter.

  And that meant Calista didn’t have to fall all over him. She didn’t have to pander to him, or try to smooth things over with him the way she did with her father. Unless she was very much mistaken, it meant she had to do nothing at all but show up.

  “I’m not interested in any scandals either, actually,” she said now, with images of remote Castle Crag still spinning around in her head. She folded her hands in her lap, presenting him with the perfect posture she liked to roll out in the boardroom, where no one expected much from the blonde, pretty daughter of such a hateful man. They looked at her and saw a bimbo. Which was usually right about when she whipped around and sank her teeth into their jugulars. “But I’m also not interested in being threatened with fortresses on rocks a million miles from shore.”

  He...froze. “I beg your pardon?”

  Slipping back into her familiar corporate mode was comforting. Because there was something about King Orion that made Calista...edgy. He wasn’t what she’d expected, maybe. For one thing, the approximately seven trillion photographs she’d seen of him in her lifetime didn’t really capture him. He looked like the images she’d seen, with his close-cropped chestnut hair, grave hazel eyes, and that stern mouth. It was just that, put all together, he was a lot more than a novelty tea towel sold to tourists in all the shops.

  A lot more.

  Her chest felt a bit tight and her pulse was a bit dramatic, if she was honest.

  Part of it was that he was so shockingly fit. Rangy muscle, surprisingly solid, and packaged into a dark suit that should have made him look stuffy. But instead, it was cut so well that she found herself feeling remarkably patriotic about the way the fabric clung to his wide shoulders.

  Even as he sat there and made pronouncements about what she would or wouldn’t do, all she wanted to do was move a little closer to see whether or not his abdomen was as hard and ridged as she suspected it was.

  But more than all of that, it was that air around him. As if he emitted his own electrical charge. There was a sense of leashed power in him, in the way he held himself and waited, almost, that she had not been expecting.

  The same way she hadn’t been expecting a hollow, hungry thing deep in her belly to hum at the sight of him.

  You need to get your act together, Calista, she snapped at herself. Because she had far too much riding on all of this to lose her head over a handsome man.

  Even if the handsome man in question was her king.

  And, more, thought she was going to marry him and produce babies on command.

  “It seems to me that you’re under the impression that you have control here.” She smiled, that little curve of her lips that business associates liked to claim was enigmatic. Usually after she’d pummeled them into dust. “But my understanding is that you actually have to marry me. Whether you want to or not.”

  He stared at her, that same frozen and arrested expression on his face. “Am I to understand that you know about the—ah—leverage your father has used against me?”

  Aristotle had ranted excessively about the fact he had something on the old king that the new king would kill to conceal. He had not shared what that leverage was.

  Something Calista saw no reason to share with the man staring her down.

  “The point is that the leve
rage exists,” she said, because she had always been good at playing these little power games. “And it exists on you, not me. So I’ll thank you to stop making threats about Castle Crag. I have no interest in playing Knights of the Crusades, or whatever your threats of going medieval are supposed to mean. As far as I’m concerned, this is a business proposition between our two families, nothing more. Which is medieval enough, I’d think.”

  She thought she’d startled him. Or maybe she only wanted to. An expression she couldn’t name and certainly couldn’t read flashed through his eyes, then disappeared into a flash of grave hazel.

  “How refreshing,” he said after a long moment, though she doubted very much he found her the least bit refreshing. “I was led to expect the usual princess fantasies.”

  Calista laughed. “I can’t think of anything I would like to be less than a princess. Luckily, what we’re talking about is my becoming a queen, not a princess. I can get my head around that.”

  “Am I to understand you see yourself as one already? Metaphorically speaking, of course.”

  “I’m a businesswoman, not a queen,” she replied, her heart beating a little faster because he’d challenged her, however obliquely. “And let me set the mood here, to save us some time. I don’t care what your relationship is with my father.”

  “I would never describe the interactions I have been forced to have with your father as a ‘relationship.’”

  King Orion’s voice was so frigid she was faintly surprised icicles didn’t sprout into being round the room. Suddenly, it felt like November in a more northern, snow-covered place, instead of the typically mild Novembers here in Idylla’s balmy Mediterranean climate.

  She told herself she was immune to the cold. “Whatever you want to call it, I’m not interested in it. I’m sure you have your reasons for bowing to my father’s whims and accepting this ridiculous betrothal. But whatever those reasons might be, it means only that you, like so many others, have surrendered to his blackmail.”

  “Again, I would dispute those terms.”

  She waved a hand. “Dispute them all you like. It doesn’t change the facts. You’re in his pocket, which means you’re now in mine. And who knows? I’ve never had my own king before. Maybe it will be fun.”

  And she watched, fascinated despite herself, as King Orion Augustus Pax looked at her as if his head was exploding. Internally, of course.

  Externally, all she could see was a muscle flexing in his lean jaw. And that fire that turned his hazel gaze to gold.

  Despite herself, her breath caught. She suddenly wondered what it would be like if the most controlled creature in the history of the world—something that had been apparent when King Orion was no more than a princeling, especially when stood next to his disaster of a father—let go.

  Could he let go?

  She felt goose bumps shiver down the length of her spine.

  Orion’s eyes were volcanic. But his voice was calm. “I will remind you, Lady Calista, that I am your king.”

  “I do know that, Your Majesty. That’s why I curtsied.”

  She made her voice careless, but the seething heat that was blasting her way was more uncomfortable than she wanted to admit. She got to her feet as if this was her meeting. Her darling little room tucked away in the royal palace, and the man before her nothing but...some guy.

  Though no one could possibly confuse King Orion for some guy.

  Just as, no matter what she’d said, it was hard to imagine a man so electric and indisputably regal in anyone’s pocket, either. Even if she knew that he was. Her father had made certain to brag excessively that he was the architect of this betrothal, as if she wouldn’t have figured that out on her own.

  “This must be hard for you,” she said, moving to look at the pictures scattered on the dreadfully elegant sideboard. Pictures of the two princes. The former queen. And not a one of King Max, which she supposed was only to be expected. She had yet to meet a soul who missed him, except possibly her father. And not because he’d had any affection for the dissipated late king. But because he’d been so easy to manipulate.

  “Which part?” Orion’s question was crisp. A bit like a slap. “The part where, for my father’s sins, I am forced to contend with a base, repulsive reptile like Aristotle Skyros? Or the part where, having accepted that I must do my duty to my country even in the face of such an insult, I am confronted with a craven display of overweening self-importance that I must crown and call my queen?”

  Ouch.

  But she laughed and she couldn’t have said why. “Overweening is quite a word, Your Majesty. Though I think you’ll find that what men consider self-importance in women is usually the sort of confidence they consider par for the course in a man.”

  “On the contrary, Lady Calista.” And that light in his hard gaze made her want to shiver. “Were any man to dare speak to me as you have just now I would lay him out flat.”

  Her curse was that some part of her longed to see it.

  She made a tsking sound, and found herself leaning back against the sideboard in what was, she could admit, a bit of a show. How could she help herself? She was being forced into an arranged marriage against her will. That was the long and the short of it, and no matter her intentions where that was concerned or her reasons for going along with it, a girl had to make her own fun.

  And you’re in no way trying to cover up your response to the man, a voice inside her that sounded a lot like her sister’s chimed in.

  “Violence is something we expect from your brother, King Orion,” she said, ignoring that voice. “Never you. Never the desperately responsible crown prince and possible savior of our dissipated country, a man so excruciatingly polite and correct that no one has ever been able to dig up the names of his lovers.”

  The king did not rise. He did not lounge back in his seat. He did not fidget, adjust his clothing, or shift his weight—and yet she still had the impression that he gathered himself. And changed, somehow, the very composition of his body. Right there before her eyes.

  She told herself she was being foolish. But all the while, that gaze of his grew ever more molten.

  “I imagine that must be a favorite pursuit in a media enterprise of such journalistic integrity as Skyros Media.” His voice was a sardonic lash and it cost Calista something not to wince. “Rifling about in the trash for private information that is none of your concern.”

  She lifted her chin. “I think the word you’re looking for is news.”

  “There is nothing newsworthy in someone’s personal life. It is private and personal, by definition.”

  “I was under the impression that you were the king of this country,” she shot back, lifting her brows at him. “Can a king have a personal life? I rather thought that what you do with the life your subjects support is our business. Either way, the choices you make personally affect us all. Or did you miss out on the entirety of your father’s reign?”

  Something blazed in his gaze then, and she expected him to erupt. To shoot to his feet. To hit something.

  Or even raise his voice.

  But instead, King Orion stayed where he was.

  Locked down, she found herself thinking. Frozen solid.

  And she didn’t know why she had the sudden, sharp urge to see if she could melt him, by any means necessary.

  When he spoke, she couldn’t repress a shiver, because his voice was perfectly even. Measured. As if there had been nothing the least bit volcanic here when she was sure she could still taste the ash in the elegant room all around them.

  “If your aim was to impress upon me that you will do as you like, consider it done.” He studied her, and to her surprise, she almost felt as if she might...blush. Something she didn’t think she’d done in her entire life—not when she’d grown up under Aristotle’s thumb. Thankfully, the odd, prickling feeling passed. “I appreciate you
coming into this meeting prepared to show me exactly who you are, Lady Calista. I assure you I won’t forget it.”

  That, too, was a threat. And a more effective one, perhaps, because he said it so calmly.

  “If you think I’m going to curl up in a ball and cry because you don’t approve of me, think again,” she told him, striving for the same tone, and refusing to duck her head or make herself smaller. There was only one man she pretended to cower before, and it wasn’t this one. No matter if, deep inside, there was that humming. “I’ve agreed to marry you, Your Majesty. I’m fully aware of what that means.”

  “Are you?” He tilted his head slightly to one side. “I wonder. For example, can I expect this same aggression in bed?”

  Again, a prickling heat swept over her, and horrified her. Worse, there was a gleam in the midst of all that stern hazel that told her he knew it. He knew he affected her.

  When Calista had spent all these years learning how to conceal her feelings so well she sometimes wondered if she had any left.

  She met his gaze as if he didn’t trouble her in the least. “If you had the slightest idea how to be aggressive in bed or anywhere else, Your Majesty, I feel certain we would have found evidence of that by now.” Calista allowed herself a smirk. “And run it in our tabloids, of course.”

  To her surprise, he laughed. “Is that how you measure things, then? Whether or not it shows up in one of your sick, sad little magazines?”

  “I believe in a free press. Was that the question?”

  Orion looked entirely too satisfied, and she hated that something deep in her belly quivered. “I’ll take that to mean you haven’t the slightest idea what you’re getting into with me, Lady Calista. How delightful to find we have something in common.”

  She felt breathless again, and had to remind herself that no matter what happened here in the battle for control over their dreary arranged marriage, it didn’t change reality. And the reality was that he could talk a big game, but he had no power here. He could go on all he liked about his reserved, competent, sane rule, but he had no control over her or what she did or if she was any of those things.